


Water on Stone

by Molly



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: First Time, M/M, Slash, sentinel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-09-21
Updated: 2008-09-21
Packaged: 2017-10-02 00:40:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Molly/pseuds/Molly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>In which Jim comforts Blair after a nightmare, and Blair comforts Jim after an argument. </i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Water on Stone

It started with darkness, warm and thick as honey. My blankets were soft and nubby, as old as I was, another one of those blasts-from-the-past Mom was always dredging up from storage God knew where. Silver light filtered in through the curtains on the window, throwing a bright square against the far wall.

Playing the sentinel game, I listened to the night-sounds of the loft, trying to put names to them: The pained whine of old pipes in another part of the building, the not-quite-constant hum of the refrigerator, the occasional idiotic motorist flying by too fast on the empty street below. The square of light trembled, brightened, and shattered as it moved across the wall, then snapped back into place as engine sounds faded into the distance.

Home. The sense of it was almost physical; I stretched out in it, felt it wind through my legs and arms and stomach, through the shift of muscle and bone.

Upstairs, Jim slept -- not quite peacefully. The occasional soft squeak of his bedsprings filtered down through the ceiling, and I crossed my arms behind my head as a prop, smiling to myself in the imperfect quiet. His name fit into my thoughts like a missing puzzle-piece, completed them. Jim. I could feel him above me, a part of all this, a part of _me_.

It felt good, both the darkness and the safety. I drifted in it, breathed it in for a while; no sense of urgency here, no place I had to be. I was comfortably half-asleep, almost gone when the quality of the silence...

...altered.

Fractured.

A premonition shivered through me and turned my blood cold and gelid.

//somethingishere//

Sweat broke out along the back of my thighs, over my throat, and my sentinel sense of safety was gone like smoke, like it had never existed

//whoareyoukiddingblair//

and I strained into the silence, the darkness, but all I picked up were those same familiar sounds filtered through a brand new conviction of danger.

It was abruptly cold in the loft, so cold, the blankets were weight without warmth, and suddenly we weren't alone, Jim and I. My breath fanned out and caught silver light from the window: Crazy unseasonable winter, confined by the boundaries of our home.

Whatever sense warned me was beyond the scope of testing; it was something centered in my gut, coiled like an over-wound spring. Maybe it was my sense of order, or maybe hanging with Jim had triggered some ancient lizard-brain paranoia, but something maliciously strange had been added to the Sandburg Zone and I could feel it.

Jesus, I could almost _smell_ it.

The loft outside my room yawned vast and alien in my mind's eye, a geometrical wilderness of shapes and shadows. The emptiness of it twisted a fine wire of fear into my spine, made my bones ache. I tasted adrenaline on the base of my tongue, swallowed back the bitterness, and waited for mundane confirmation of what I already knew.

It came in the sullen creak of a floorboard, out of place, wrong, definitely not on the list of approved sounds for 852 Prospect, apartment #307.

A brush of air against clammy skin, wrong direction for the vent. Too warm for summer anyway, too moist.

In its wake, the stillness crawled with menace.

//Jim,// I called in utter silence, praying he'd wake. Knowing he wouldn't. I knew what was happening, what was going to happen, with an inexplicable certainty that knotted my stomach.

The chaos moved. I could feel its advance in my blood and in the tightness of my chest and in the sudden, panicked stink of my own sweat. It moved past the open door to my bedroom without a sound, giving nothing away. I wanted to scream, warn Jim, but fear choked me and my heart thundered in my ears and the darkness deepened before my eyes and the careful focus of my senses broke into a million pieces

//hereit'shereJimherewakeUPmancomeON//

and I couldn't make a sound now, even though I wanted to, even though in my heart I was already screaming. Paralyzed, frozen, I was mired in thickened air as it moved toward the stairs, toward Jim, toward the center of everything I was born to keep safe. It moved like smoke, silent, scentless, but it _moved_, and it was malevolence incarnate and nothing I had ever done had brought me here, it was too much, too much

//Imagination,// the scientist in my head said, but his voice was none too calm and it was quiet, quiet, just a whisper. I'd left science behind, and sense, entered a world with no right angles. Abandoned myself to it, God, how easy it was to let go of the light. Had there ever been light, here?

The edges of my mattress defined the borders of safety; it took all my courage to breach them, the hardest thing I'd ever, ever done. Each individual atom of my body screamed that Jim was in danger

//move//

but I couldn't, I was silent and cold and blind and then my skin prickled where it bridged the empty darkness. I reached up, up, flailing, panic rising as my clock hit the floor with a plastic clatter, followed by a notebook and anything else in my way as I stretched for the lamp. I was galvanized by the sudden noise and my throat closed around what would have been a decidedly unmasculine sound; my knuckles knocked the shade askew, and it was there, and I nearly sobbed with relief as I reached out to steady it and my fingers found the switch, finally, and pushed it

and when the click sounded the darkness just got darker and my brain was frozen in fear and even the light from the window was gone I thought I'd died, I really thought that, I knew my heart had stopped and that was it, the screaming, maddened, sanity-free end of Blair Sandburg. I just hoped Jim could wake up because it was out of my hands now and a pathetic, mewling part of me was suddenly, obscenely relieved.

Shame followed, hot in my cheeks and my throat. Nothing moved, nothing, even Jim's slumber above me was abruptly silent, and I was ambushed by the sudden, desperate hope that I was dreaming. Desperate, yes, because if I were dreaming then consciousness was out of my reach, I couldn't wake up and I couldn't tell if I was just too deeply asleep or if I were already awake and there was no stopping the descent in this place even if it were a dream I was lost and alone and this was happening, happening with the sudden invasion of fear and terror and something beyond terror

//madness//

and I screamed again into the sudden hopeless emptiness of my mind, a prickling flush of electricity sweeping beneath my skin, jangling, wake up, wake UP, WAKE UP, and the darkness closed around me even as I saw the barrier in my heart and dove for it, mired myself in its thickness, pushed deep and hard and through --

...

And a scream ripped out of me in full Dolby surround, harsh and raw and painful in my throat, and suddenly I was sitting up, pushing myself up on weak arms that felt heavy as lead, out of the bed and onto legs that didn't want to work. My breath came in choked gasps and the chaos was gone and I was awake, blessedly aware and conscious, and the nightmare was fading, the sense and the senselessness of it, fading into a trackless haze of anxiety.

I hit the light, which came on, thank God, and bathed the room in yellow safety. Jim was there, coming through the door like salvation in plaid flannel boxers and it was over. Finally over.

  
   


* * *

  
   


Reality was Jim's shuttered eyes and within them, more fear and concern than I could withstand. It was what I needed, and when he came forward to sit on the edge of my bed, I reached out for his hand. I didn't let myself think; my heart was going crazy and I could only barely breathe, and Jim was warm and solid and real. Thank God. Real.

He wrapped strong fingers around my hand and tugged; I didn't resist. I wrapped my arms around him and clung like a barnacle, desperate for the comfort of his body. Jim Ellison, walking, talking security blanket -- I breathed him in deep, soaked in his heat and the constant drum of his heart against my chest. I felt like a coward, like a five-year-old, but there was nobody there to see it except Jim and he knew better.

There was a sound in my ears, and it took several seconds to recognize it as my own voice. His name. Over and over, like a mantra. I bit down on it, but the words made a staccato beat in my brain that fueled a tensile strength I didn't know I had; I gripped Jim tighter, closer, and buried my face in his neck.

So good. He felt so damn good...I needed him so much then, loved him so much that for too many long, warm seconds I didn't make even the usual, transparent attempt to hide it.

It wasn't exactly my best-kept secret anyway.

His hands moved over my back, a long, easy sweep up and down my spine. The scrape of blunt fingernails through the thin cotton of my T-shirt was just rough enough to anchor me. Jim's voice took up where mine left off, muttering nonsense words, random comfort. I heard my name, I heard him say I was awake, I was all right. I heard him call me 'kid' and his arms tightened around me and I heard him say other things, gentler things, and that was when I pushed him away.

I wasn't playing fair.

"It's okay, I'm okay." I held up a hand to move him off me and tried to find my breath. His chest was bare and slick with sweat, warm under my fingers, and the resignation in his eyes was as familiar as the flickering dilation of hurt that went before it.

I jerked away, pressed my hand to my own chest and the reassuring thud of a slowing heart.

"What the hell--"

"Nightmare, okay? Just -- chill." In and out, in and out. Breathing is good, once you get the hang of it.

Jim's eyes were huge, blinking in the light as they tried to adjust. I would've helped him, but I couldn't spare the oxygen. I wouldn't let him touch me again, so he reached out with his voice, calm and even. "The one with the giant waffles again?"

The laughter that bubbled up killed the fear; it was raw and clearing, edged with hysterical, Ellison-induced relief. "Oh, man." My voice wasn't quite steady, and I gulped in more air. "Worse than the waffles. Worse than anything."

He kept at it, water on stone, reassembling my composure. I was ridiculously grateful to him for the effort. "Worse than the one where Lash chains you to the dentist's chair, then turns into Ricki Lake and convinces you I'm your father?"

I grinned, glancing at him sideways. Should've known he'd be throwing that one back at me. It'd taken me two whole minutes to come up with it the last time this happened, and he'd nearly hurt himself laughing before heading back upstairs to his room.

Misdirection had worked then; it could work for me now. "Worse even than the one where you are my father."

"I don't think I've heard that one."

He smiled and waited, playing along for the moment; I leaned back against the wall, closing my eyes. The man should have a black-belt in anthropologist-repair; he was fixing things, like always, remaking me in my own image. I'd done the same for him, and I could've done it for myself, but God, I was glad I didn't have to.

Friends do these things for each other.

Somewhere, I found half of a smile. "It's horrible," I said, faking a shudder. "I always wake up in a cold sweat, just after the third spanking."

"Too bad. In mine, that's where the good stuff starts."

"That's sick, Jim," I said, laughing, just as he added "You really okay, chief?"

"No," I said truthfully. "But I can see it from here."

"Let me--"

"Uh-uh. I'll be fine." I opened my eyes, feeling better, just needing to mark my place among the familiar books and papers and artifacts cluttering my room. "I just -- I need a little breathing room." He moved closer anyway, close enough so we were touching at the hip, and put a hand over my heart. "Did I just say something? I thought I said --"

"Relax."

His hand was warm. I tensed under it, the reaction not quite within my control. "Back off and I will."

"Relax, and _I_ will."

"Very macho, Jim, but I'm fine and I don't want to keep the sandman waiting. You can just run along..."

I was fairly pleased with myself; I came very close to sounding like that was what I wanted.

"Make you a deal." Jim moved his hand up to the artery in my neck; he could've gauged my pulse from across the room but times like this, he wanted the anchor of touch. I rolled my eyes to let him know how necessary it wasn't, but the post-traumatic-Blair-check was as inevitable as it was inescapable. "You tell me everything I want to know, and I'll quit pushing."

"Did you feel that?" I said, solemn and insincere.

"What?"

"My pulse leaping with awe at this evidence of your high regard for my privacy."

That got my hair yanked, but he pulled back out of my space and shook his head. The light played warm and yellow over the slight, puzzled smile on his lips. "This can't last, Blair. Pretty soon you're going to have to tell me what these nightmares are about. Why not tonight?'

"I tell you every time it happens."

"You lie to me every time it happens. A guy could get a complex."

Nailed. The man was not a sentinel for nothing. "Hey, the waffle dream was real."

Jim glared at me; he was highly skilled in the art. "I know," he said -- and even with the affectionate overlay, the irritation in his voice did not bode well for me -- "You had it when you were nine. Your grandfather made huge waffles for Halloween breakfast and put powdered-sugar fangs on them and big red strawberries for eyes. You woke up that night screaming that you'd eaten a vampire and now it was sucking your blood from the inside."

Oh, man. "You called Naomi?!" My mother was not long for this world once I found her. This was betrayal of the highest order; even the Nixon fixation was less sacred than a little boy's fear of waffles. "For Pete's -- how did you get hold of her?"

"She gave me her cell phone number last August."

Oh, yeah. Mom was toast. I didn't even know she _had_ a cell phone. "You guys get along way too well."

His smile came slow and easy, oddly smug. "Jealous?"

I groaned, and covered my face with my pillow, sliding down the wall and deeper into my blankets. He wasn't going to drop it, wasn't going to quit offering me everything he had, and breathing into stuffed cotton wasn't doing wonders for the coherency of my resistance. All I could really focus on was that I should be resisting, it was important for some reason I couldn't quite recall, but while I was searching for a come-back both witty enough to be impressive and distancing enough to evict Jim from my bed, I made the mistake of looking up over the top of the pillow.

If he weren't transparent as glass, I might've survived.

I caught him staring at me in that way he had, that kind of confused, kind of awed way like he was glad he had me but had no idea what to do with me. There was a tilt to the set of his head, and his eyes were the slightest bit narrowed, and a crease the size of the Grand Canyon had opened up just above his eyebrows. It was intense, it was more than a little bit comical, and after a brief detour through my gut it shot straight into my heart.

I became one with the wall. It was too fucking late -- or early -- for me to deal with residual adrenaline _and_ physical proximity _and_ that look. One or the other, hell, even two at a time I could've handled. This --

\-- this was way too close. It was everything he wanted to give me, right there in his eyes, and it had so very little to do with what my body wanted from his that the dream-panic surged over me again, and for a moment I couldn't look away.

Worse than that. God, so much worse. I didn't want to. I could've bathed in that look for hours, it was that deep.

"Well, better get back to sleep," I said, nearly gruff, ruffling through my repertoire of 'I'm okay, you're okay' expressions and coming up with something close to a smile. "Early morning tomorrow, right?"

"Tomorrow's Sunday," Jim said, and I knew he was having none of it. "What are you dreaming about?"

I dropped the look, and the fake yawn died before it was born. My lips pressed together, and I flattened my voice, stripped it as bare of emotion as I could. "Then I'm late for sleeping in."

He wasn't listening. He never listened to what I _said_. "Tell me."

I watched his eyes, which never left mine, take on a warmth as persuasive and soft as his voice. I watched his face while he watched me, felt a familiar sense of soaring as that steady, honest look dismantled my defenses. The way he just opened himself up sometimes...

Levering up with my hands, back still against the wall, I folded myself comfortably with arms propped up on my knees. The covers sagged between my legs, and I picked absently at a dangling thread, toying on one level with the idea of yanking it free while on another level, my thoughts ran dark and silent as a subterranean river. Even I didn't know what I was thinking that far down; I just let it run, swift and sure, patiently riding out the journey.

While I studied him, Jim studied back; it was only fair, and I honestly didn't mind. I knew what he saw: A contemplative mess, needing a shave, hair unkempt and falling out of the ponytail, into my eyes. Ratty green T-shirt with bleach-marks down the front from an afternoon battle the laundry won. I knew I was fairly scruffy-looking, even for me, and I knew how much he liked that.

I liked how much he liked that, I always had. In that we were united; Jim Ellison could crawl through a jungle's-worth of muck and come out of it a sight that made me weak.

"Tell me," he said again.

And because the erosion had been slow but steady, because tonight _was_ just as good as any other, I did.

I knew I couldn't close this door again, and I knew exactly how terrifying the dream wouldn't sound. I was expecting to see that tiny grin he gets, that 'humoring Sandburg' grin that would make me want, more than anything in the world, to smack the holy hell out of him.

All I could do was sit there and blink like a stunned parrot when, instead, he nodded in utter seriousness, putting a world of empathy in bright, sincere blue eyes.

"Jesus, Blair," he breathed softly.

And then, just as I was drowning in what I'd mistakenly assumed was concern: "What did you eat for dinner?"

I did the only thing I could do.

I laughed. I laughed so hard and long I was shaking when it was over, totally purged, and I looked at him straight through it as if he were the most important thing in my world, which he was; as if he belonged to me, which he did. I put my heart into my eyes the same way he'd shown me his, wondering if he would see it, wondering what he would do if he did.

And then I hit him. Very hard.

With the pillow.

In the head, which, all things considered, is really the safest place to hit Jim Ellison if you don't want to injure him permanently.

He grabbed it away and laughed, throwing his head back so the sound poured up out of his throat like a fountain. He reared up on his knees on the bed for leverage, ready to extract his revenge, and I caught his arm as it descended for the assault.

Stilled the downward arc, pulled him closer, held his wrist just tight enough to show him how hard I could squeeze, if I wanted to.

I could feel the strength of muscle and bone beneath my hand, feel his breath against my face, and I froze like a piece of bewildered statuary, my gaze locked inextricably with one that mirrored the surprise in my own.

I forced air out of my lungs, so hard it hurt, and swallowed another breath so fast I choked on it. "I'm-not-ready," I said when I could speak, the well-rehearsed answer to a question he'd only ever asked with his eyes.

I had time to be proud of myself for it, the uncomplicated pride of the hopelessly simple-minded, and I was all of one second into despicably smug self-congratulation when he answered my opening shot.

"Like hell," he said softly. "You've been ready for years."

Then he reached out, very slowly, with the hand I didn't have and laid a gentle, callused finger at the exact center of the hollow of my throat.

The contact burned, and that was it for me. I never had a chance in hell.

  
   


* * *

  
   


Once when I was ten I'd had a contest with my cousin Robert to see who could hold his breath the longest underwater. Not being very fond of cold and even less fond of wet, I lasted about twenty seconds before things went black and fuzzy and bright spots started floating behind my eyelids. Robert, a year older and gifted with a chest like a rain barrel, had lasted a full minute and twelve seconds, and won as a prize the right to call me Blair the Square for a solid week, retribution free.

If any part of me had ever wondered what his secret might have been, it wondered no longer. Now, I knew.

Motivation.

Jim's finger moved with the slow, hot deliberation of a blow-torch, his eyes intent with concentration, and I couldn't have taken a breath if my very life depended upon it. Wouldn't have, even if I'd had the choice. A very small, very interested part of me was watching his face while he touched me, but the rest was lost in deep focus, irrevocably fascinated by the searing progression of that raspy-soft fingertip over the sensitive skin of my throat. My lungs were drowning in carbon dioxide, aching with the need for air, and I couldn't do it, couldn't make them expand.

Not until he noticed, and grinned, and reached up to clip me gently on the side of the head.

"Breathe, Sandburg," he said. "You're starting to look like a smurf."

"I can't," I said, which was patently false because I'd had to breathe in order to speak. "Don't do that."

He dropped his hand instantly, and would've moved back if I hadn't still had hold of his other wrist. I brought his fingers back to my body, my throat. "No," I said. "That part I like."

"Then--"

"Don't compare me to anything cute or short or annoying. Especially don't compare me to anything that's probably incapable of sex. I hear they're blue for a reason."

"And you think I'm sick?"

"Hey, man, you brought it up."

"Somebody had to."

And suddenly, we were no longer talking about the mating practices of sexually-challenged blue-balled mushroom-dwellers.

We were talking about us.

  
   


* * *

  
   


I nodded slowly, holding his eyes with mine. We'd gone beyond denial and resistance.

"Okay." I moved back, folded myself into lotus at the head of the bed; there was no way I could do this with him that close. Breathing deep, I shut my eyes for just a second in hope of locating some internal solid ground. "Okay," I said again. Letting the breath out, I watched him mirror my position -- with no small amount of difficulty -- two feet away.

Jim smiled generously, his entire face crinkling with goodwill. "You first."

"Thanks, Jim."

"Anytime."

And then he subsided, and waited with geological patience for me to start.

Logical man that I am, I began at the beginning. Teacher that I am... I began with a question. "You ever wonder what I did before I met you?"

He'd been watching me; now I watched him as his attention turned inward. I knew the answer, but I wanted to see him find it; I liked this, liked watching his mind work, even at a problem so simple. Truth was, Jim might dwell a little too much on his own past, but the rest of the world he took on as it came. I arrived in his life as a fait accompli and he'd never been inclined to worry about how I got there.

"I just...never much thought of it," he said, looking puzzled now that he hadn't wondered sooner. "At first there were other things on my mind, and then..."

"And then there were even more things on your mind."

He nodded, eyes trained on me again. Same look he'd give a hardened criminal: No malice, no push, just clean, laser-fine intensity. He could cut the truth out of a guy with a stare like that and cauterize the wound for him after. "So, what did you do?"

"I looked for a sentinel."

Quick flash of a grin, beautiful. "What, from birth?"

"I wasn't that much of a prodigy, Jim."

"I was about to get intimidated."

"I started when I was about twelve."

Jim blinked slowly, twice. "Okay. Now I'm intimidated."

"I may have exaggerated slightly for effect. But I was fairly young."

"You're still fairly young."

I lobbed another pillow at him; he grabbed it out of the air and kept it, cutting my reserve armory by half. "I'm nearly thirty, Methuselah. I've been out of diapers for well over a week."

A roll of his eyes told me to get on with it.

"I came across this reference to Burton in a history book sometime in high school, back before I'd mapped my life out to nine decimal places. It was just a passing thing, something about scouting pairs in the tribal villages of Peru. I don't even know for sure why, but I checked out the bibliography."

"And then you looked for the book."

"Right, and then the next, and the next, and over a decade later I'm still tracking down references, Jim. Don't you think that's a little bit bizarre?"

"A certain level of strangeness has become routine in the past few years, Sandburg. I don't see--"

I leaned forward, as if I could get through to him if I just got a little closer. "First I was your observer. Then your partner. Then your friend." Zero comprehension, it was like talking into a wind tunnel. "Jim, we become even more than that and I'm wrecked, okay? My journey to the dark side will be complete."

"Is this where you tell me I'm your sister?"

The more I wanted to scream at him, the lower my voice got. After all this time, arguing quietly was an instinct. So was touching him, and I leaned across the distance between us to close my hand over his wrist. "You have to cut me a break here. If we take this road, I'll have obsessed about you so totally that you'll be everywhere, man. It's like this... this inevitable progression, one level to the next to the next until I've wrapped myself around you like ... like I dunno what, Jim. Analogies fail me. Like something way fucking abnormal."

"There is going to be a point in here somewhere, right?"

"This is the point." I slid my hand down to his, clasped them together and held them up between us. "This connection. You are my best friend, Jim, and I can handle that, it's new but it's right. I can do this part of it, I'm good at it --"

"The best," he said, and god, his eyes were so soft on me, so warm. His hand was strong and held mine like a lifeline, like he was going down for the third time.

I disentangled our fingers, let him go gently. Tried not to see the hurt as I pulled away. "Jim, you're not listening. You, you're like totally in love with me." He flinched, I saw it, but I couldn't stop now, I was too close to the truth he had to hear. "An idiot could see it, Jim, it's not a casual thing with you. And here I am, wanting you like crazy, obsessing about you till my brain's fried, but that's not the same thing and I don't know what to do with it. It's too much for me and it's not enough for you."

"No," Jim said. His voice was very quiet, and my heart dropped in my chest. "It's not."

Then he unfolded himself, stood up, and took a step toward my door. He was kin to the shadows there, they caressed and outlined him, contrasted with him the way any darkness had to. He was too bright to be safe out there, to vulnerable to be safe in here, and my heart felt strange and alien in my chest at the thought of him leaving my room now, like this. The lost, defeated look on his face made everything inside of me shatter.

"Jim, don't," I said, surprised at the thickness of my voice. "We're not finished."

He paused with his hand on the door frame, head bowed, bare shoulders tense and knotted around his spine. "No," he said, quiet. Final. "But I can see it from here."

I was standing before I knew it, tracing light fingers from the base of his skull to the small of his back. Muscle rippled under my touch, soothed in spite of us. "Jim, come on, please turn around." He wasn't so much taller than I, not really, and hunched like this he seemed wholly diminished, lessened somehow by the hurt I'd caused.

"Please," I said again. I had to pull him back, anchor him beside me, so I latched onto the thing he'd come for, the original thing, and offered it to him like an olive branch. "I need to tell you about my dream."

His spine straightened almost audibly, and this time -- slowly -- he turned.

My breath caught; there were mirrored walls in his eyes, reflecting me back at myself, letting nothing past. Something was growing in my chest, expanding, and I had a deep suspicion it was panic.

That would be why I was having trouble breathing. Again.

"You already told me," he said, each word bitten off cleanly before the next passed his lips.

"I didn't tell you everything. I didn't tell you what I think it means."

He leaned back against the door frame, eyes hooded. "Go on, Dr. Jung. I'm at the edge of my seat."

"The danger to you, the scary thing in the dark?"

"Yes?"

"Jim, I think it's me."

His eyes narrowed, his lips twisting as disgust informed every line of his body. He shoved himself off the door, out into the main room; the shadows out there gathered closer to him with each step.

"Jim?" I said softly, unsure what that reaction meant, unsure what I was supposed to do next.

He clicked on the light over the sink, such that it was, cold white light that didn't so much alleviate the darkness as call attention to it. He wrenched the faucet to one side of the double sink and turned on the water, then just stood there, head down, as it sputtered and the pipes overhead groaned in protest.

"Jim?"

"Come on out," he said, sounding the kind of tired that made my bones ache in sympathy. "Looks like we're gonna have a conversation."

  
   


* * *

  
   


We kept the lights dim; in the middle of the night, bright lights made me think of gruesome things, morgues and autopsies and flood-lights around crime scenes.

Jim saw to the tea without thinking about it, measuring out the leaves and putting the water on, mint and chamomile, just the way I liked it. I sat on the table, which he hated but ignored, and he leaned against the ceiling support, waiting for the kettle to sound.

I looked at him, saw the way the shadows molded themselves to him and drew sharp, shallow breaths, praying for strength. With this on offer, and our life together at stake, I was going to need it. God, I was going to need it...

"I'm waiting," he said, and my lips quirked up at the implied danger in the growled words. I wondered if he knew how much I liked that, and decided, yeah. He probably did.

I turned a little, squared off to him. We were face to face across only a few feet of empty space, but it was space with mass and density and it felt solid.

Impenetrable.

I ran a hand through my hair, stripped the tie from it and let it fall. Watching him through it, how he stood there on the brink of something, hopeful and scared and trying so damn hard to be strong, I had no idea where to start. That he could feel like that about me, that this could be so deep in him he had no defense against it... it was wearing away at something deep within me, and with every passing second my resolve was weakening.

If I didn't have to be strong for him, there wouldn't have been any strength in me at all.

"Jim," I said. My voice didn't have any weight to it, any force. "I can't hurt you."

"So don't."

"It feels like I love you, but--"

"_Feels_ like? For God's sake, Sandburg --"

"Well, how the hell am I supposed to know what love feels like? It's not like anybody ever offered me a seminar in the subject, Jim, and my experience has been severely limited--"

"I could find people who'd debate that. I couldn't throw a brick without hitting ten women who'd debate that--

"Sex isn't love, man--"

"Figure that out all on your own, did you?"

It stung. It stung deep, and I was breathing hard with the effort to keep my temper in check. He was hurting, he was angry, and he was striking out; it wasn't an unfamiliar pattern. I just had to deal with it, work within the parameters of his idiotic coping mechanisms and hope I didn't trigger anything nasty.

//Calm,// I instructed myself in Mom's words. //I'm letting this go.// My voice was low, reasonable. "I thought you were gonna let me talk for a while here?"

"I thought you were gonna make sense, looks like we both lose out -- Oh, Jesus--."

The whistle of steam from the kettle sliced through the air like a knife; Jim flinched away from the sound and covered his ears, unprepared. I was off the table in a heartbeat; I yanked the pot off the burner, silenced it, and kept quiet as he went through the exercises I'd taught him, talked himself down. Kept an eye on him, made sure it was working okay. His favorite mug was hanging from a peg inside the cabinet next to the sink; a spoonful of honey in mine, three of sugar in his, a few minutes to cool --

"You doing all right over there?" I said quietly. I sat down at the table and set things up for us, folding paper towels into napkins. Origami it wasn't, but he needed a few extra seconds to sort himself out.

"I got it," he said, and I unclenched my fingers from my mug and laid them flat on the table, breathing deep. He slumped into a chair, his fingertips at his temples, rubbing in small, tight circles just like I'd taught him. My hands itched to do it for him, but he had to learn to handle it himself; I couldn't be with him 'round the clock, no matter how hard we both worked at it.

"You sure?"

"I got it, Sandburg," he repeated sharply. "You get the tea."

My eyebrows shot up. "Uh, already did, tough guy. We're set."

He looked up across the table to where I sat watching him, obscured by two rising columns of steam. His lips twitched, not quite a smile. "Sorry."

"'S'okay, man."

"I'm fine now."

"Yeah, I can see that."

"You can tell me the rest now."

Both our reprieves were over. I wrapped suddenly-cold hands around my mug to still fingers that wanted to tremble. The rest of me...

The rest of me trembled anyway. I was too warm already.

"Jim, if we..." I stopped instinctively, out of words, on the wrong track. I could sense it in the way he tightened up across from me; I had to go slower, ease into it. "In the dreams," I said, choosing my words carefully, "it's always the same. There's something different between us and I can't stop it or control it, and it's going to hurt you badly."

"Maybe it's your tactful nature."

I ignored the sarcasm. Plowed on, digging in deeper. "I think feeling like I love you may be the result of this weird need I have to fill my life with the sentinel project."

"That's crazy," he said. His eyes were wide, awe-struck; he leaned back in his chair, shaking his head. "That's crazy even for you. Are you even listening to yourself here?"

My patience broke, and I threw myself backwards in my chair. The legs scraped against the floor, and I pretended I didn't see him wince at the damage to the hardwood. "You have an alternative explanation?" I demanded. "Fine. Maybe you'd like to share with the rest of the class."

"Try this on. You think some kind of obsession is making you think you're in love with me. What if being in love with me is making you think you're obsessed?"

I blinked.

Several times, in fact, taking that idea in. "Now _that_ is crazy."

He was relaxing now, and that made me tense up; my muscles bunched as his stretched out. He was getting his confidence back, and his body had gone lazy and supple.

He smiled like he had a secret, like he was hungry and I was a midnight snack just waiting to happen. "How is that any crazier than your version?"

"Because the study came first, Jim. I've been head over heels with the sentinel thing forever. Now I'm head over heels for you. It's just the next logical step, it doesn't mean --"

He leaned forward, and I was pinned to the chair by the look in his eyes. It was a dare, that look, and a demand. "So you think if I were just anybody, you'd be feeling this way. Any hypersensitive chump would push your buttons. Like, say, if Simon were a sentinel?"

The panic was rising again. Just like the dream. Just like it. "You never know."

"Brown?"

"Anything's possible." I was out of the chair before I knew I planned to rise, into the living room, pacing the length of the couch. I had to move, exhaust the nervous energy.

"How about Charlie Spring?"

Stopping in my tracks, my eyes found his unerringly. "Jim, that is twisted."

"You see my point, then. It's not just anybody. It couldn't be just anybody, could it, Blair?" He stood, and came to me, stood closer than he should've. I could feel his body heat. I could smell his soap and aftershave.

I swallowed once, hard. "Maybe not, but--"

"It had to be me. I'm the only one. And you know why that is, don't you."

He put his hands in my hair, tugged a little so I had to look at him. I could feel myself breathing, but I was getting lightheaded anyway. He was shaking, and so was I, and there wasn't enough air in the air, there wasn't anything to breathe.

I nodded, unable to speak. I stood there like I'd grown roots, completely at his mercy, completely his.

"Then say it."

"I can't." Nothing more than a whisper, and the whisper tasted like he smelled, mint and sweat and Old Spice, man, that was a riot, so _Jim_, it shot weakness through me and turned my stomach to water.

"I need to hear it."

"I'm not--"

"If you can't," he said, relentless, "then let me take the chance. I'm the one who stands to lose here, right? If you don't love me, you can move on. It's my choice, my responsibility."

"That's insane," I said. "If you lose, we both lose."

"No." His hands slid down to my shoulders, and he held them tight, like he was afraid I'd run. If there was any sense left in me, I would have. "If I lose," he said, "we go back the way we were. I won't push, and you won't have to wonder. Think about it, Blair. If whatever's between us has the power to hurt me, if that's what's causing these nocturnal blips on your Guide-o-Matic, then it's doing it because we're both scared as hell of it. Since when do either of us back down like this?"

"This isn't something we can arrest, man, it's not a bad guy. It's the potential end of everything."

"No, it's not." Jim grinned, suddenly looking younger and lighter-hearted than I'd ever seen him. "We can't end, Sandburg," he said, as if speaking to a particularly stupid child.

And he was right, of course. We couldn't. But we could _fail_.

_I_ could.

"It's a test," he went on, so pleased with himself, and I wanted to hit him, god, could he be that _blind_? The man was kissing cousins to danger and here it was breathing down our throats and he wouldn't _see_ it and I, god help me, I was turned _on_ by it; we were both so stupid it was a wonder they let us out on the streets.

"Fuck that," I said succinctly, and shut my eyes to shut him out.

"Yeah."

I groaned. "Jim, c'mon--"

"No, that's what we do. Admit it, Blair, it's got to happen, and I'd like it to be now while I'm still young enough to enjoy it. You make love to me--"

"Christ."

"-- and if it doesn't convince you I'm right, we go back the way we were, no questions asked."

"Yeah, sure, we just have sex and then forget about it." I laughed, the sound wilder than I would've liked. "I think not."

"It's three am," Jim said softly, rationally. His thumbs swept up the sides of my throat, and back down, gentle and easy and hopelessly erotic. "We make this a free zone, between now and dawn. If it doesn't work, it doesn't count."

I groaned, long and low, and moved closer to him. Just a step. The discussion was over. Why was he still talking?

"We're losing anyway. Slow, yeah, but you can feel it same as I can: we're changing. Your way worked for a while, but it's not cutting it anymore; give mine a shot." He smiled, but his eyes stayed serious, intent. There was desperation in that look, a marriage of fear and hope; he wasn't as sure as he wanted to be but the courage in him was indomitable. "Give me a shot, Blair."

And because he asked it, because he was going to keep on asking it and because I never was as strong as I pretended to be, or as smart...

I did.

  
   


* * *

  
   


I turned off the light first thing, thinking I'd do better without sight, but I could hear him sliding into my bed, _my bed_, between the rumpled sheets. The window let in a little light, kind of blue, turning the room into a surreal, Dali-esque landscape, shapes melting over each other in darkness and silver. He'd left room for me -- not much, there wasn't a lot to leave -- and I stood there over him like an idiot, scared speechless, higher than a kite.

It was happening now. Jim Ellison, body, heart, and soul, laid out in front of me like a banquet.

It was happening because I was letting it happen in spite of the risks.

Screwing up was no longer an option. Responsibility settled over me like a shroud, and I started counting breaths, measuring.

"The way this works," he said softly, "is you take off your clothes and join me."

I held back a laugh that would've been embarrassingly high-pitched, and tried on a smile instead. The T-shirt came off easily, the boxers less so, and I was standing naked in the darkness, knees as weak as putty. "You have any idea how to do this?"

"Not really," he said, sounding strange, strangled, and that's when I remembered sentinel vision. "Not the actual process. Know my way around the equipment, though." I could make out the barest outline of a smile.

"Spend a lot of time alone in the batting cage?" I said, making sure my voice was steady.

"Too much."

"Not tonight, though."

"No," he agreed softly. "Not tonight."

I went to him, kneeling on my own bed. The thin, weak light from the window outlined him, cast him into blurred relief; I'd never seen him like this, so beautiful, so dark and bright and perfectly self-contained the man was art and he didn't even know it, a thing unto himself, an abstract sculpture in ice but

//beautiful, separate, removed -- distant words, Blair, cold words//

he was alone.

God, he was so very alone. My heart broke for him, shattered around him like glass, left me gasping. I was wrong, so wrong it was criminal. He wasn't ice or art; he was flesh, he breathed and loved and hurt

//youdidthatsandburgyourfault//

and he wasn't distant at all, he was right there, all of him, offering himself to me like a gift I didn't deserve, and there it was, nobody deserved gifts, they just got them, and if they had any kind of sense they were damned grateful when they did.

I hadn't been, I was an idiot, but I was getting smarter with every passing second.

_I_ could be alone. I was good at it, used to it, prepared.

_I_ could hurt. I didn't have pain stored up the way he did, I could handle it in a way he couldn't, not anymore.

I could torture myself, deprive myself, but not him, Jesus, not him. Never him. I was wrong, I had been from the start.

It slammed into me like a freight train, watching him as he lay there, primed for my touch, terrified of what I might say to him, how I could hurt him. It took my breath away, turned me weak and scared as he was; a couple of tough guys, that was us, if you didn't count blind, screaming panic and gut-deep insecurity.

How the hell was I supposed to know what love felt like?

Because I was in it up to my neck, that's how. Because I'd been in it for years, calling it by everything but its name.

"Jim." My voice shook from trying to put so much in the word, and I knew it wasn't enough, not even close. It steadied me to say it; reminded me to stay strong for him.

His voice was sharp as a razor. "If that's pity--"

I reached out, a single fingertip, and touched him like he'd touched me. He jerked like I'd burned him, but didn't pull away. I went slow, almost mesmerized, drawing a line from the base of his throat, down the center of his chest.

Smooth, smooth skin, and warm, and if anybody was going to get burned it was me, there was so much heat there. He shivered under the touch, and his eyes wouldn't leave mine, he was drowning and he wouldn't kick for the surface and he wouldn't let go of me and that was the way it was going to be, we were going down together, no hope for either of us.

I couldn't find it in myself to care.

Not an obsession, not an infatuation. Stupid, so deeply stupid-- "I love you. I'm so sorry. I--"

"Sandburg--"

"No. No, listen." I moved closer, clumsy with speed. My arms locked around him and I held on tight, pressing close, warming both of us. He was so stiff, unprepared, and it was my fault. He was shaking.

"Don't--" he said roughly, then took a deep breath that pressed his chest into mine. "If you--"

"It's okay." I gentled him with my hands, pressed them into his hair, pushed his head into the crook of my neck and shoulder and held on. "You were right," I said, breath catching as he stopped fighting me. Stilled in my arms, breathing hard, small, hopeless sounds grinding in the back of his throat. "I'm such an idiot."

"I know," he said, and laughed a little into my throat; it was weak laughter, edged, but real.

"I love you. You were right." I couldn't stop saying it, and his arms closed around me, squeezing my breath out, and still I couldn't stop saying it until his hands moved up to my head, and he lifted his to look at me, and then I couldn't breathe at all, let alone speak, let alone think and he moved closer and

//ohmanhe'sgoingto//

he kissed me, so damn gentle, so deep. It was touch with no pressure, taste without heat, it was evasive and sweet and if it was a test I failed because I couldn't be tentative, not when everything had just clicked into place. I arched into him, fire to his air, and took his mouth with mine, not easy, not _kind_. I wanted war in the touch

//mine//

so I created it there, battering at his fears. Battering at mine, too.

He took everything I gave, everything, and begged for more with the press of his hands at my hips, the driving heat of him, the roughness of his tongue on mine. He was at war too, fighting my doubts, doubts that hadn't survived the first touch, doubts that had been defenses, worthless ones.

He'd had me from the start.

I detached myself, needing my mouth for diplomacy.

"Can I...?" I said, my fingers resting at the corrugated waistband of his boxers and when he nodded, eyes closed, I reached inside.

Never let it be said Naomi Sandburg's son is shy.

Jim didn't make a sound when I touched him, clumsily, for the first time. His breathing didn't change. Something in his face did, though; I was watching, and there was a tension there, as if it were taking more effort to keep his expression neutral. I didn't know what to do, I'd never been here before, but he needed something and god, I wanted to give it to him

//yes//

and my breathing had changed, battering against his chest in ragged gasps. I wanted to do so much I was paralyzed with indecision, fingers still against the hardness of him while my mind flew in a dozen different directions. I probably would've stayed that way forever if Jim hadn't spoken.

"Blair?" Strained, the barest note of frustration wrapped around amusement, trembling in my name.

I laughed, heard the wildness in the tone and closed my own eyes for a second, trying to calm down. I was on an emotional tilt-a-whirl and I'd barely touched him; if I couldn't set myself in order I'd lose control and god help him if I did, I'd take everything from him and I didn't know how much I had to give back.

Everything. It had to be enough. I had to make it be enough --

"Sorry," I breathed out, resting my forehead against the easy swell of his chest, overcome. "Give me a second here, Jim."

"You got it," he said, same tone. "Just--"

"Yeah. I know."

Just _do_ something.

Releasing a pent-up breath, I let my fingers move.

He felt odd beneath my hand, hard, but also kind of soft and -- fragile. I knew how to touch myself, what each pressure and friction would do, instinct and practice had taught me what felt good and what I wouldn't like. Jim, though, he was alien under my fingertips; touching him was like exploring territory I'd only seen a map for. Everything was as different as it was familiar, heat and softness where I expected it to be, but the responses were so different, so invasive

//soJimsohonestsincere//

"...you like this," I said irrelevantly, tilting my head upward on the pillow we were sharing to smile at him.

"...you think?..."

I tried pressure, and yeah, he did like that, tensed in his shoulders and abdomen and pushed into my hand; I tried easy strokes that barely brushed the skin, and he liked that too, holding himself still for it while his jaw clenched, and his breath came fast. I'd started to wonder if there were anything he wouldn't like when my thumb swept up a little too high and he flinched, eyes flying open.

"Not there," I said, smiling encouragement to show him it was okay, and he nodded, smiling back.

"You've got pencil calluses," he said, the smile turning into a grin that transformed mine, too.

"I'm sensing criticism," I said, watching him.

"Just...ah, okay, that's...that's good..."

"You were saying?"

"...I was...?"

"Yeah." I leaned up to taste his mouth, and his hand moved to adjust mine -- less pressure _here_... more _there_ \-- and I stroked him again, and this time it was good, for both of us, very, very good.

He moved with me, less tension, less reserve, and I took confidence from that, finally felt strong, breathing fast and hard and shallow as it hit me, a hundred miles an hour, what I was doing, who I was doing it to. This was Jim, my best friend, lying there beside me in the blue, edgy light from the window with his face so pale and clear, murmuring to me, asking me for things with his body that neither of us really wanted to say out loud.

I touched him because I had to, because he was magnetized, hand shaking like a branch in a high wind until I pressed it against the center of his back and brought him closer, chest to chest. It was better than good then, holding him, an illicit thrill of power to it as I drove him, fed him, fired him on. I traced quick fingers over the length of him

//warmth, sweat, so good//

and breathed in his soft chuff of surprise; I played him rough, submerged in the heat and thickness of him. I pushed him harder than I'd ever pushed a woman because I needed more from him, needed more _for_ him, and this was my only chance to get it right.

"Perfect," I whispered, lips brushing his. His eyes gleamed bright in the window-light; it was still several hours till dawn.

"Takes one," he whispered back, his voice faltering.

"...yeah, yeah..."

There was a heat under his skin that burned into my hand, a strength leashed to my control, and I wanted it, needed it this way, this time, this possession. He was mine like this, sweet, tough, strong Jim Ellison needing my hands on him, my touch, and god, with his head thrown back like that, mouth open, eyes squeezed shut I almost couldn't tell if it was pleasure or pain but it was beautiful, so totally beautiful and he was mine, every part of him, this part of him, mine and I was never going to survive this, not in a million years, life as I knew it was over --

And I was so fucking scared about it I couldn't do anything but shake.

I looked up and watched him see it, the end of pretense, the shattering of the last wall. He smiled through the pleasure -- sweet reassurance -- still moving, still reaching for it, but who was holding whom was now a question that could've been debated.

My breath hitched, broke. He was looking into me, saw right through me, and the tenderness in his eyes was brutal as it tore through my fear. I couldn't look away from what he was saying to me, silent and insistent.

Fear was useless. Walls were dangerous. Strength was our greatest weakness.

Understanding hit like lighting, struck again and again, illuminating everything, and the most important thing

//ever//

became achingly, terrifyingly clear:

The responsibility here was shared. Just like everything else.

"Breathe," Jim said for what seemed like the millionth time, and I finally found myself capable of it. I watched over him in his pleasure, solemn and oddly joyful, touching him in the way I'd just learned and feeling completely, utterly lost with him as he weakened under it

//_yes_//

and flew with it, making low, drawn-out sounds deep in his throat as his body sparked against mine.

I wanted to tell him I understood, that I could do this, I could be this way for him, but my voice wouldn't come and I think he knew it, anyway. He was so much better at this than I ever gave him credit for, so much stronger, so I just stayed quiet and loved him, wallowed in him, drowned myself in the terrible, shattering intimacy of touch.

I lost track of care, lost track of time as I watched him, moved with him, his fingers tracking aimlessly over my face and throat until they clenched tight on my shoulders, bruising when my hand tightened on him

//good to touch him, do this for him, for both of us//

over and over. He gasped for breath, the center of him somewhere apart from me, somewhere inside himself as the pressure in him climbed. I reached up and licked into his open mouth, wanting a part of this, wanting to be with him in the heart of it and his tongue on mine was surprisingly cool until I pulled it in and that's when it happened, that's when his hands became claws and his body convulsed

//Yes, Jim, oh, yeah, that's it, there you go//

a knotted muscle-madness that twisted his face and voice and I pulled back to watch and to fall apart with him, sympathetic tremors, taking in every sweat-sheened line of him until finally, beautifully, he calmed.

I couldn't; I trembled beside him, wanting him, more vulnerable than I'd ever, ever been.

And safer; the sky hadn't fallen.

Strength was highly over-rated.

  
   


* * *

  
   


Generosity being one of my better qualities, I gave him time to recover. Sixty seconds at least. Possibly a few more.

"Jim," I said, quiet but hopeful, stroking an easy line down the center of his chest.

"...mmmmm..."

I leaned closer, said it into his mouth on a kiss. "Jim."

His hand drifted up, lazy as a sweet dream, and patted me on top of the head. "'S'nice, Blair," he mumbled against my lips.

I frowned, pushed back, and had opened my mouth to deliver a few choice comments about age and stamina when his eyes opened, blue and alert and deeply, deeply evil.

I shoved at him, not hard, and shook my head. "Man, you are such a jerk."

"So much for the afterglow," Jim said, grinning.

"I'm still pretty much in the beforeglow here, in case you hadn't noticed..."

"Oh, I noticed," he said.

And then he proved it.

  
   


* * *

  
   


I wanted to draw it out, but there was no way that was going to happen. Not after what I'd just seen, not with

//exhilaration//

emotions flashing to the surface like emergency bulletins with every breath I took. Certainly not with Jim leaning over me, smiling down at me with this look on his face, warm and promising and soft and dark, all at once. My heart was in my throat, and I kept swallowing, hoping eventually I'd be able to speak, if I could ever think of anything to say --

"You figured it out," Jim said softly. A gentle finger ran over the curve of my shoulder, taking its time, trailing a warm shiver down to the bend of my arm. He stroked there, right over my pulse, while he waited for my answer.

All I could do was nod, and hope that was affirmation enough.

"I wasn't sure you would," he said, which wasn't news to me. I nodded again, and smiled around a hitching breath as his fingers drifted down to my palm. He was reading my body like Braille, his grin widening when I shivered -- I could read my own responses in his face, see his pleasure in drawing them out.

"I'm -- ah, god, Jim --"

"Yeah?"

"I'm a...very bright kid..."

He touched me with little skill or grace, and there was a wildness to it, breathless and fierce and tender. I was lost between a deep, twisting ache with pleasure wrapped around it and a pressure of laughter rising up in me from someplace that wasn't quite sane. I burned for him, shuddered fresh with every incautious sweep of his hand, and at the same time he was so enthusiastic it was scaring me to death, all hands and mouth and teeth and hard where I expected soft until I was more than half afraid he was going to do one of us serious harm.

"Jim," I said, not sure what I meant to communicate, just taking reassurance from the feel of his name on my tongue. I was gasping, not sure if I was about to moan or crack up at the absurdity of it all, when the hand that had been exploring my chest with melting slowness pulled back abruptly.

It took me several seconds to notice, I was that involved with the struggle between conflicting impulses, and when I did finally open my eyes I found my partner -- in all things, now -- looking at me the same way he did that time I set our toaster on fire.

"You want to share the joke, Sandburg?" he said, dry as a cheap martini.

He was irritable and flushed and glaring. There was an image in my mind of him watching me like that while his body moved over mine, into mine, an image that throbbed with dark heat and brought me closer to the edge than I thought I could be while still holding on.

I wanted him to look at me like that while he took me, did things to me I'd never wanted done; I wanted to see him feral like that, to see him smile and show teeth and I wanted to see that look shatter into tenderness when he came again.

Most of all I just wanted him to keep touching me, but it wasn't like me to want just one thing and while my mind leapt from one vivid, wet possibility to the next his face changed. The irritation was banked, shoved aside, and he laughed in a tone that seemed to rub velvet wetness over every part of me.

"You don't know _what_ you want, do you?" he said.

I shook my head vigorously until it occurred to me he might take that as disagreement, and then I nodded, just as certain. He laughed again, a growl underneath it, something hot and predatory, and I hit the flashpoint like firecracker, so fast, so hard it hurt, and I was afraid I was going to lose it right then, just from the way he sounded

//he_knows_me//

because it wasn't about me having him, it wasn't about controlling him or having power or even an exchange of power, like I'd thought it would probably be; it was about

//lettinggo//

skin and sex and the kind of torture that makes you scream because it's not enough and about love, that too, because without that none of the rest of it could burn like this. This was my part, my charge, to give into it and drown in it and not just give, wasn't enough to just give I had to take what he offered, too, and I wasn't laughing anymore, and I wasn't breathing right

//overload//

just little hitching sobs and pressing closer to him until I couldn't stand the way he just hovered there not touching me and I grabbed his hand and begged

//Icandothis//

for it, not delicate or subtle, and brought his hand down between my legs and pressed it there and he squeezed once, hard, knowing exactly what he was doing. I twisted under him, said his name and he said "I know" and I said "Here" and dragged his head to my chest and he said "Sh, just relax, I know..."

and he leaned down to my chest and took one aching, rising nipple into his mouth. He touched it with his tongue, warm heat, wet, rough, again, kept going and kept his fingers wrapped around me, nothing like tender or clumsy now, all deliberation and intent, and while he suckled and touched and I could feel all of it, stubble from a not-so-recent shave and the calluses on his fingers and the way his muscles tensed under his skin

//again?ohyesagain//

and I raced for that edge inside and dove over it, mindless of restraint, hoping he'd follow but too lost to reason to care. I was done for, convulsing, helpless as my body clenched around him, folded in over him, melted into him

//stay//

took everything from him, arms twined around him in what I hoped felt like love to him because to me it felt a hell of a lot like sheer orgasmic panic.

It was a very long wait for me to calm down. I'd done it, I'd survived the give and take of it and come out whole and he held me the way I was holding him, returned strength for desperation, and he didn't let go. I think I would've maimed him if he had but he didn't even make the attempt and truthfully I kind of knew he wouldn't.

My partner's a very smart guy.

  
   


* * *

  
   


"Blair?"

"mmph?"

A finger tapped me on the nose lightly.

"Sandburg."

I opened one eye, and found myself not displeased with what I saw. Jim's hair was all mussed up, what there was of it, and his eyes were red, and he needed a shave and a shower -- possibly two of each. He was naked, stretched out lean and unselfconscious on top of the covers, and there was a pink, sunken line down one cheek where the pillow case had wrinkled under his face. He looked like the bad end of a good shore leave, utterly disarranged and so pleased with himself he glowed.

I was probably glowing a little bit myself. No room for fear now, no need. My smile felt bright, so wide my cheeks hurt.

"Shut up," I said. I said it kindly because I still loved him, but with enough of an edge so he'd know it wasn't going to stop me from popping him one if he didn't let me go to sleep.

His smile only widened, grew evil. Not a nice man, my sentinel. "Sweetheart?" he said, saucer-eyed with insincere concern.

_That_ opened my eyes.

"Actually," I said, ruining what tried to be a very seductive purr by yawning right in the middle of it, "I prefer that my favored bed-partners address me as 'honeybunch'."

Jim grinned at me, all blue eyes and teeth. It was a totally different smile from the night before, light shined out of him and his face crinkled up and I almost didn't hear him say, voice full of love, "After we're married."

_Almost_.

"After we're _what_?"

"Married," he said, looking at me like I was a very sweet, very stupid child. Adrenaline surge nearly stopped my heart, and I could feel the blood draining from my face. "You know, happily ever after, till death do us part, cleaving only--"

I swallowed hard. There were mines in this territory, I had no idea where they were, and I was scared to breathe for fear of setting one off. "Familiar with the term," I said carefully, my voice a little high. "I just, uh, I didn't think--"

"C'mon, Chief. I know this wasn't a one-time thing for you--"

"Of course it wasn't, Jim, but--"

"--so what's the problem? We love each other, we want to be together. Soon as you talk to my father, we'll take a couple of days and go to Hawaii. Something simple--" He waved his hand in the air in a decidedly non-descriptive fashion.

"As soon as I _what_!? Jim, man, I don't think...Oh, Jesus."

The bastard was laughing at me.

"You are such a dick," I said shakily, weak with relief and fighting my own sense of humor. He just kept laughing so I hit him with my pillow and he laughed even louder and I was about to call 911 prior to killing him and swearing he'd broken into my room when he grabbed my hands and pinned them on either side of my head and started to kiss me.

I say started, because he took his time about it, and by the time he was through neither one of us were laughing but both of us were grinning in a way that wasn't exactly revelatory of great intellect.

"You're trying to kill me," I gasped when I could. He could turn on a dime, passion to hilarity to solemnity and back again, and I could already see how much he loved throwing me off my stride.

I tried to feel indignant about it, but I was too fucking happy to care.

"What happened to the stamina of youth?" he asked, eyes flicking down my body like he was trying to decide if he should buy it.

"It died screaming at the thought of your dad's face if I asked for your hand."

"Well, I don't know that you have to ask him."

"That's really generous of you, man."

"Simon, though, you should definitely check with--ow! Jesus, kid, I'm gonna take that thing away from you if you don't quit whacking me with it."

"It's kind of attached, Jim."

"I meant the pillow."

I grinned. God, I loved him. Needed him like an addict, was endlessly fascinated with him, he had me and we both knew it and I wouldn't have it any other way.

I had him, too. We were good together, and the balance was fair, just as he'd known it would be.

I reached out, traced the curve of his ear, drew an airy line down the arch of his throat. I leaned close to him, looked right into his eyes.

"Really?" I said, and smiled at him kindly. "That what your generation calls it?"

  
   


* * *

  
   


I didn't want to sleep in his bed -- I had this superstitious notion that sleeping there was like the kiss of death for a relationship with Jim, it was _not_ a lucky piece of furniture -- and he didn't want to sleep in mine. It was narrow and it didn't have the greatest carrying capacity and the sheets were quite frankly, by this point, disgusting. We were about to have our first real _relationship_ argument when I pointed out that there was a perfectly good rug in front of the fireplace. Considering both our chosen occupations, we'd slept a lot rougher than that in the past, and though I didn't want to say it out loud, I had kind of a weird idea that he'd look really good sweating, outlined by firelight.

We played it light, distracting each other from the seriousness of it with jokes and touches and a high, bright wildness that came from being totally at one another's mercy. He built up a fire while I put away the dishes from our midnight tea. The distance between us was no distance at all now, it seemed like there wasn't enough distance in the world to separate us, and I was scared. It gave my laugh an edge, made me talk a little too loud, a little too fast.

Jim covered it better than I did, but I caught him looking at me every time I turned around, hope and desire right out there on the surface. I think the only thing that scared us more than not knowing for sure what was happening between us was the chilling prospect of talking about it.

We laid out blankets and pillows with that tension growing between us, pretending it wasn't there. I told him I had a virtual armory there if he got out of line and he promised to go easy on me and when I was as comfortable as I could get, my back against the couch, Jim took stock of the arrangement of my limbs and fitted himself into it like a Jenga piece.

I leaned forward, readjusting, and wrapped my arms around the wide bulk of his chest. My legs went around his waist, pulling him snug against my groin (purely for the sake of comfort, of course), and I propped my chin on his shoulder so I could look into the fire with him.

"You were right," I said. "Have I said that already?"

"Couple of times. Doesn't mean I'm tired of hearing it."

"You were."

"I know."

The tension ebbed. I felt dizzy in the warmth and the golden light, my body touching Jim in so many intimate places. Feverish and chilled all at once. This was where the darkness had been deepest in the dream, the place the chaos had ruled: This no-man's-land between my territory and Jim's. Shared space here, ours together; our lives had collided in this room from the start, my books and his files, his furniture and my plants, his stereo and my CDs. It was only right that if we were going to merge our bodies and hearts, it should happen here.

"Love you," he said, so softly I could barely hear it.

"I know," I said.

Who said you had to be afraid of a little chaos?

"You want to talk, don't you," Jim said. His voice rumbled in his chest; it felt good where his back pressed into me.

"No." My arms locked around him, holding him probably too tight. I hoped it didn't hurt, because I didn't think I could let go. "I want to sleep, and then in the morning pretend that we talked, and that everything worked out okay."

Jim turned his head toward mine, buried his nose in my hair, nuzzled at me. "Okay," he said, lips hindered by the pressure. "That's what we'll do."

And because we loved each other, because we were cowards, because we were somehow sure of ourselves in spite of all the dangers...

...that was what we did.

The fire was warm, and dawn was a long time coming.

.end


End file.
